In March, I went to Hangzhou to visit, walking in the shade of Yanggong Causeway, passing by the Peking Opera master Gai Called Heavenly Tomb. The cemetery is on a hill on the east side of the Yanggong Causeway by the West Lake, sitting on the east and facing the west, which is really a treasure of feng shui. I climbed up the stairs and visited the tomb of the master, and the tombstone was engraved with the words "Artist Gai Called the Heavenly Tomb". There is a "Muxia Pavilion" in front of the tomb, and the plaque facing west reads "Learn from the Old" (Huang Binhong Book), which is a tribute to the master's life to learn from the old. On the granite column there are couplets "Jiangnan HuowuSong, Yanbei Really Good Han" and "Yingming Gaishi Sanyikou, Masterpiece Shocking Cross Slope" (Wuhu FanShu), which are the general evaluations of the master's artistic career!
Mu Cai Ting couplet
Peking Opera performance artist Gai Mingtian (1888 – January 15, 1971), known as Zhang Yingjie, Yannan, a native of Gaoyang, Hebei, was a Peking opera actor. Originally a child, he entered the Tianjin Longqing Like class, learned martial arts, and later changed to an old student. After the voice fell, he still played the martial arts. He has performed in Shanghai for a long time. His representative works include "Stage Art of Gai Mingtian" and "Wu Song".
Cover called heaven
There are also stories about the origin of Gai's name. In his "Spring and Autumn of Pink Ink", Gai Mingtian has such a passage - originally my stage name was "Golden Bean", which was started by Tianjin Longqing and Mr. Lao Qi of Keban. He looked at me with great energy, quite fighting, and played a martial arts, which gave me this name. I'm 13 years old, like a thrush, and I'm very energetic. However, it is not very appropriate to use this name for singing and opera, so when they arrived in Hangzhou, they collectively gave another stage name, and at that time Tan Xinpei called it "Xiao Called Heaven", and I said that I would call it "Little Called Heaven". I mean, in his name, get some millet to eat. Unexpectedly, one of the people present looked down on me, sneered at the side, and said, "Hmm, you deserve to be called this too!" This made me say that I was on fire, and I was young and angry, and he stood up on the spot. Why can't I use that name? Can you see people dead? Not only is it to inherit the art of my predecessors, but I also want to become a family of my own, "cover" the sky, and be unique. In this way, I used the three words of the cover called heaven.